


Stray Dogs and Grifters

by Dorinda



Category: The Sting
Genre: 1930s, Con Artists, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-05
Updated: 2010-01-05
Packaged: 2017-11-20 17:56:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/588132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dorinda/pseuds/Dorinda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A job goes bad, and for Henry and Johnny it's turn and turnabout.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stray Dogs and Grifters

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Giglet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Giglet/gifts).



When the job went sour, it happened all at once. Henry'd finally gotten in on the poker game, though these particular boys had taken a long time to sweeten. It was a testament to Johnny's skill that he was well in with them by now, eyeing Henry with the same sullen boredom that was in every other face (and how he could put such an ugly sneer on a map like his...it was a conjuring trick, no two ways about it). Henry affably tipped his hat and cracked his knuckles. Now they could get down to it.

But then, say about midnight, the door opened and in came Big Frank Slater. Henry's thumbs slipped on the shuffle, sliding the cards every which way. He gathered them up with cold hands. Slater had never actually seen Henry face to face, but he was bound to recognize Johnny: Johnny had headed the front line crew of the old fight store they'd helped Twist rig up in the summer for a nostalgic lark. And you could only cool down a sore mark with words if the mark had the patience to listen to you. Slater didn't have patience. He had his fists.

Three seconds, while Slater was still busy at the door pulling off his coat, and Henry'd made his mind up. He looked over at Johnny, whose face had gone still. _Be ready,_ he said with his eyes, and of course Johnny read him, sliding his chair back casually from the table. Johnny might've seen something else, though, just for a moment, because then his expression turned worried and stubborn, like he was going to balk. Henry spent another valuable second letting their gazes lock, insisting, though he couldn't help feeling a smile underneath wanting to pull at the corner of his mouth. Johnny looked stricken, but his chin dipped ever so slightly.

And so Henry tore himself away and went fully into his part, trusting Johnny to his own devices and whatever gray angel watched over stray dogs and grifters.

"Oh, hell--is that Big Frank?" he said, standing up unsteadily, knocking his drink over, his voice rising in disgust. All eyes went his way, most especially Slater's. "You guys didn't tell me we was gonna have to play with no goddamn welshing dive artist!"

It all went downhill from there--the real kind of downhill for the room, but the good kind for Henry, like a bellyflop ride on a sled. Slater's recent losses in the ring must've still been stinging him (and Henry's next slur against his mother surely worked wonders), because it wasn't long before he had Henry against the wall with one hand and the boys in an uproar, half trying to hold him back and half milling around like a wasp's nest poked with a stick.

When Henry could next focus between shoves and chokes and half-checked punches, he saw over Slater's meaty shoulder that the door was ajar, and a few of the wiser fellows had slipped out. He closed his eyes and let out a breath.

"What're you grinning at?" came a shout blasting right by his ear, followed by a sloppy jab to the face. He could relax now, and he did, sagging at the knees.

"Frank-- Come on-- He's just a drunk-- He ain't worth it--" the room hummed and buzzed, swarming around him. Henry had time to appreciate the lack of true brutality in them; Johnny had picked the game real well, until that joker had popped up in the pack.

It was cold in the alley where they dumped him, cold and damp. He lay with his face mashed up against something truly foul as they stripped his pockets inside out and took his bankroll and his watch.

Blessed quiet. He planned to roll over so he could breathe better, once he had his strength back. Just a minute more.

But then there were hands on him again, these ones careful and familiar, warm against the pulse point in his neck.

"What the hell are you doing here," he said into the mud.

"Waiting for you."

Those fine, warm hands turned Henry over and traced along his jaw. Henry opened his eyes--at least the one that wasn't so sore. Johnny was backlit by the faint glow of streetlamps at the end of the alley, his face darkly shadowed under his hat brim as he felt Henry's arms and legs.

"What for? Just so I can have a front-row seat at your funeral?" Henry coughed and spat out some of the taste in his mouth. Johnny abruptly passed a thumb over Henry's lip and peered at it in the dimness. His entire frame settled, the angle of his shoulders, and Henry knew he wasn't seeing blood.

"Can you walk?"

"Sure." And he could, too, at least once Johnny had heaved him up and steadied him. As they headed down the alley, Johnny started to pull Henry's arm around his shoulders and support him like a drunk, but Henry eased away to walk on his own--looking too pie-eyed in this neighborhood was more likely to get them rolled than ignored. Not that Henry had anything left to take, but he did like having one good eye and an unbroken nose.

Neither of them had come away with an overcoat, and the wind bit sharply, especially through the wet patches soaked into his clothes. Henry was shivering by the time they made it back to the flat--the real one, where they never took the marks. He stopped right inside the door and slowly bent over to pull off his shoes. He wasn't bringing that alley in here if he could help it. As he straightened up, his bruises complaining, he heard Johnny out in the hall, talking to one of the kids who hung around the building and ran messages.

He could tell the radiator was working, from the heat in the air and the faint smell of burnt dust, but it didn't seem to be reaching his bones properly. He peeled off the damp, filthy clothes, keeping only his drawers, clenching his teeth together to keep them from clicking. The floor was chilly to his bare feet as he made his way over to the sink and ran the water as hot as it would go.

Johnny came back in at last, latching the door, and Henry glanced into the mirror and finally got a good look at him.

"Say." His bottom lip stung when he smiled. "You saved it."

Johnny carefully took Henry's hat from his own head and hung it on the rack. "Not so hard. It came off pretty quick, once they got started." He wasn't smiling.

"Well, look." Henry stuck his hands and wrists under the hot water. "He'd have killed you."

"I know."

He scrubbed at his face and ears, checked his swollen eye, and rinsed out his mouth. No blood in the water, he was pleased to see. Dripping, he looked in the mirror again. Johnny hadn't moved except to put his hands in his pockets.

"No, I mean it," Henry said. "With some loudmouth heckler, he'll be fine after a few slaps and a show for his pals. But losing back in the fight store, that _embarrassed_ him. Hit him where he lives. So, he comes in and sees you in that room..." He buried his head in the towel.

"I do know, Henry. You just can't expect me to like it."

"Fair enough." His face and hands were warming up, though the rest of him still felt cold all through. He sat down gingerly on the bed and pulled the quilt around his shoulders. His eye was basically sound, but it ached like the very devil, and from what he'd seen in the mirror he was going to have some shiner.

Johnny still hadn't come fully into the room. He was watching Henry with his face all clouded over (as far as Henry could tell with the one eye, anyway).

"Oh, don't take it so hard," Henry said. "I know you gave it your all. No one else coulda gotten us in there. It was a good plan, and I was sorry to see it go south. But it was just one of those things."

The clouds did not lift. In fact, Johnny seemed stiffer and more shuttered than ever, and he simply stared at Henry for a moment. Then he said, tightly: "Henry. You sure are sharp, when you're on the job."

Henry blinked his eye at that, but before he could pull the remainder of his wits together and say something, there was a rap on the door.

Johnny turned smoothly, as if he'd been expecting it. Henry couldn't see past him, but it sounded like one of the messenger kids again, and Johnny came back into the flat holding a shapeless brown paper parcel.

Henry watched as Johnny unwrapped it on the table to reveal a neatly trimmed little steak, a fresh bright red, marbled white all through. He whistled. "What a beaut."

"Now let's see that eye." Johnny finally came toward him.

"You shouldn't have done that," Henry said. "Waste of a good beefsteak."

"Not to me." And Johnny's voice was so strained, almost choked, that Henry looked at him with alarm--really looked, now, for the first time since that smoky little room, that moment of decision and silent argument. And what he saw was Johnny asking--saying-- _Let me._ Just as Henry'd done at the card table. Turn and turnabout.

Johnny was right. Henry _was_ sharp...when he was on the job. Otherwise, he was a real prize chump.

Henry reached out at once to touch Johnny's free hand. Their fingers brushed and intertwined. "C'mere."

He drew Johnny in close to stand between his knees, and looked up at him lopsided. Then he simply closed his eyes and waited.

The cold pressure felt good on his eyelid. And Johnny's touch felt good on his face, lightly tracing the cheekbone. When Johnny kissed him, the twinge from his sore lip was just another spark in the firecracker fizzing in his chest.

Johnny pulled off his own shoes, gently pushed him over in the bed, and climbed in. He passed careful fingers over the bruises on Henry's ribs and belly, touched his lips to the bruises on Henry's jaw and throat, and Henry didn't brush off or make light of any of them--he sighed and soaked up Johnny's warmth and was thankful.

Nobody had anything to be sorry for. They'd never say different. It was the work. But Henry felt apology beneath the tenderness in Johnny's hands, and he stroked Johnny's hair with some sort of wordless apology of his own.

"How's it feeling?" Johnny asked.

Henry made an effort not to slip the subject or crack wise. "Better," he said. "But I think that steak's done about all it can do. Unless you're planning to feed it to me for breakfast, too."

Johnny's smile flashed, first time all night. That warmed him almost as much as Johnny's body did, nestled with him under the quilt. "Here," Johnny said, and he slipped out of bed to wrap the steak back up in its paper, returning with a damp cloth. Henry lay quiet under his ministrations and watched him, all the stiff hesitation gone, his face composed and beautiful.

When Johnny stripped down and came back into his arms, Henry ran a couple of fingers down the groove of his spine and up again. "Guess we'll need to start planning a new job tomorrow," Henry said.

Johnny stretched against him. "Guess so." He was silent a moment. "What would you say to a few quick rounds of the wipe, to build our bankroll back up?"

"Let me guess," Henry murmured. "I'm the guy who got robbed."

"You'd be real convincing with that face."

Henry yawned--carefully, due to the lip. "Glad to be useful."

"Unless you're too big a joe now to go slumming it with me," said Johnny, and all the humor was back in his voice, crackling underneath.

"Mister," Henry said, "I'll slum with you anytime."

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> For [](http://giglet.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**giglet**](http://giglet.dreamwidth.org/)'s 2009 [fandom stocking](http://community.livejournal.com/fandom_stocking/76658.html). Thanks to [](http://marycrawford.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**marycrawford**](http://marycrawford.dreamwidth.org/), [](http://merryish.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**merryish**](http://merryish.dreamwidth.org/), and [](http://arduinna.dreamwidth.org/profile)[](http://arduinna.dreamwidth.org/)**arduinna** for all their help!


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